Category: Madagascar

The islands off Madagascar are reached almost entirely by boat, and the strongest cluster sits around Nosy Be in the northwest: Tanikely for snorkelling, Komba for lemurs and crafts, Iranja for the sandbar, Sakatia for quiet. The eastern option pairs…

Ambositra sits on the RN7 between Antsirabe and Fianarantsoa and is the centre of Zafimaniry woodcarving, a tradition recognised by UNESCO as intangible cultural heritage. Geometric patterns cut into furniture, panels and house frames define the style, and the villages…

Berenty Private Reserve offers the easiest and closest lemur viewing anywhere in Madagascar, with around 500 ring-tailed lemurs and dancing Verreaux's sifaka on wide flat trails you can walk unguided. Most visitors stay one or two nights and add a…

Beyond the lemurs, Madagascar holds three groups of mammals found nowhere else: the tenrecs, small insectivores that have radiated into forms resembling hedgehogs, shrews and otters; the euplerid carnivores including the fossa; and a set of endemic rodents including the…

Anakao is a Vezo fishing village an hour south of Toliara by boat, with beach lodges, reef offshore and access inland to Tsimanampetsotsa National Park. Just offshore, Nosy Ve holds a breeding colony of red-tailed tropicbirds and is the accessible…

Madagascar has 5,000 km of coastline and very little built on it. The strongest beaches are on the islands: Île aux Nattes off Sainte-Marie, Andilana on Nosy Be, and the sandbar at Nosy Iranja that appears at low tide and…

Madagascar works well with children for one reason above all: nothing here is dangerous. No large predators, no venomous snakes, and lemurs that come close enough to photograph without a long lens. The difficulties are long drives, basic facilities and…

Andasibe-Mantadia National Park is the easiest place in Madagascar to see wild lemurs, above all the indri, whose calls carry for kilometres through the canopy at first light. Most visitors book a guided walking safari of two to six hours,…

The best time to visit Madagascar is between April and November, the cool dry season, with September to November the strongest window for wildlife and July to September for humpback whales. January to March is cyclone season, when roads flood…

Fianarantsoa is the cultural centre of the Betsileo highlands, holding the best-preserved old town in Madagascar, the country's only tea estate and its unlikely wine industry. It is also the terminus of the FCE railway, one of the great rail…